Hock Lee Bus Riots revisited

Not too long ago, Channel News Asia had a documentary "Days of Rage" on the Hock Lee Bus riots of 1955. Pretty much as expected, it was a one sided affair demonizing the Communists while ignoring the fact that the PAP are partners with them then, with Lim Chin Siong being a founding member of the PAP together with Lee Kuan Yew (Lim broke up with Lee's PAP in 1961 to form Barisan Sosialis).

Historian Dr Thum Pingtjin rejected the narrative of the CNA piece; according to him the antagonist is not the Communists, but the Hock Lee management, who repeatedly reneged on their promises to the workers, and directed drivers to drive out over the picket line, resulting in scores of unionists being injured. His interview with TOC can be see here (Part 1) and here (Part 2).

Of particular interest is that Dr Thum refers to the Singapore Parliament Reports to support his version of the events.

Here are some excerpts quoting the words of Lee Kuan Yew (who was the lawyer of the Bus unionists then), pointing to why the Unionists and the Chinese population got so angry :

"... Sir, the Chief Secretary has complained about the attitude of some sections of the Chinese Press in their presentation of the events of the last week. I do not have any complaint. I just wish to record a fact - that we are really living in different worlds: those who read the English Press, those who read the Chinese Press, those who read the Malay Press, and those who read the Indian Press. In the Chinese Press, in the Malay Press and the Indian Press, everyday, was published the evidence presented before the Commission of Inquiry, the evidence of how the workers were cajoled, were coerced, to join the employer's union on recruitment. Evidence was heard of how the employer tried to buy trade union leaders over with rewards, and of all the other disreputable tactics which readers of the English Press were so happily spared... 

...I think the Chief Secretary's very efficient C.I.D. could have told him this - the Chinese-speaking people were talking about the Hock Lee Bus workers. They knew the Hock Lee Bus Company. They knew what was happening, and the thing was before their eyes everyday...

...It was a straight fight between an employer who had decided, the day the union was formed in his company, that he was going to crush it, and who then systematically set out to recruit redundant workers whom he fed at two dollars a day, whom he forced into his own union. He just waited for the time which he knew was coming when wage claims would be made, and an industrial dispute would arise, and either they would go on strike, in which case he would just carry on with his new workers; or he would dismiss them, which was what he did. It was a plain straight fight for survival. That was the basic cause of the bitterness, the hostility, the anger in the dispute... "

Lee's account in that Parliamentary report can be read from columns 200-218.